A little bit of history At the very start of this article I should point out that there really is nothing new under the sun. While most people think that the mesh head was new when the TD10 was launched back in 1996, it actually goes much further back. Somewhere on my computer I have
There was a time (a long, long ago, in a galaxy, far, far away) when certain members of any band would be the butt of all the jokes. Traditionally, the drummers were thick and dribbled when they played, bass players would be failed guitarists who could only count to four (so felt more comfortable playing
OK, so last time we looked at sampling. How does all this differ to modelling? Well, lets have a look; The idea of physical sound modelling has been around since the early 1970's. The principal is very simple – any sound can be approximated by adding other sounds (or waveforms) together. The more sounds you
Ah, the first of probably a few contentious subjects! If you are under 40, this may mean nothing to you. If you are over 40, the word 'sample' may mean something entirely different... So, you know that lovely electronic kit you own? How are those sounds made? How do they come to be
Asking for trouble? Ok, so its not what I said we'd look at this time, but in the last few days a crosstalk issue cropped up with someone who got hold of me through the site for advice, so I though it would be fitting to have a look at it. So Crosstalk
Ok, so time for another setting you might have seen inside you module that you might not be 100% clear about. Lets look at Reject Time. Lets imagine you put a trigger on an acoustic drum. And lets say (just for fun) its a big, low tuned 16” tom. Now, lets say that you dont
Uh oh! BIG audience... cue BIG polyphony problem... Okay, so here's our next subject – polyphony. So what on earth is polyphony? Well, it comes from two Greek words, 'poly' meaning 'many', and, 'phony', meaning notes, and for us drummers it just means how many notes can your drum module play at the
Okay, so here's another subject which might initially seem rather boring and inconsequential, but is actually very important for the feel (not so much sound, importantly) of your electronic kit. So what we actually mean by a dynamic curve? Well, if you think about playing an acoustic drum, when you hit quietly, the drum responds
THIS is a threshold... of sorts I know I mentioned that we'd look at Velocity Curves this month but having had a think about it, it would make much more sense to look at those interestingly named Thresholds. Thresholds? Ok, so you've probably seen that in your module (although it may be
Well, that's a weird thing to be writing a blog about surely? Gain? Are you sure? Absolutely. Its one of the most misunderstood things when it comes to electronic drums. Get it wrong and your pads act like switches – hit them and they make a noise at one level. Get it correct and you
